Chapter 3

The Four Grand Mansions

In the nineteenth century, four Teochew merchants built large courtyard mansions in Singapore. Only one still stands. Knowing about the other three helps explain why the survivor matters so much.

The phrase “Four Grand Mansions” describes a group of traditional courtyard houses raised by wealthy Teochew towkays. They showcased both the prosperity of their owners and the architecture of the Chaozhou homeland. Remarkably little is recorded about three of them. The conservation scholar Assoc Prof Yeo Kang Shua, who co-wrote a 2021 research paper on the subject with researcher Martina Yeo, notes that most clues now come from old maps, building plans and archival photographs. What follows is a summary of what published sources say, in the order the houses were built.

1. House of Tan Seng Poh (1869)

The earliest of the four stood at the corner of Hill Street and what is now Loke Yew Street, near the Armenian Church. Its owner, Tan Seng Poh, headed the colonial opium revenue farms and was the first Chinese member of the Municipal Commission. The mansion was large enough that, according to The Straits Times, local Chinese residents referred to Armenian Street as the street “behind Seng Poh’s grand mansion”.

After Tan Seng Poh’s death and a change in family fortunes, the house was lost and demolished in the early 1900s. A row of shophouses built by the Cantonese businessman Loke Yew took its place.

2. House of Seah Eu Chin (1872)

This house stood at North Boat Quay. Part of that land is now occupied by Parliament House. It is generally believed to have been commissioned by Seah Eu Chin’s son, Seah Cheo Seah. Seah Eu Chin himself was known as the “king of gambier and pepper” and helped pioneer commercial gambier planting in Singapore. He was the founding president of the Ngee Ann Kongsi, which became the principal institution of the Teochew community in Singapore, supporting welfare, education and cultural life.

Accounts describe a striking entrance gate leading into a courtyard. The family sold the land in 1918, and the house did not survive the post-war years.

3. House of Wee Ah Hood (1878)

Wee Ah Hood was among the biggest gambier and pepper merchants of the mid-nineteenth century. His mansion on Hill Street later became the second office of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, which bought the property in 1912. The house was demolished in 1961, and the Chamber’s present building rose on the site.

4. House of Tan Yeok Nee (1882–1885)

The last to be built is the only survivor. Tan Yeok Nee’s house at 101 Penang Road was modelled on his clan house in Chaozhou and sited for good fengshui, as described in chapter two. It was declared a national monument in 1974 and is today the sole physical example of the type.

Three of the four were lost to debt, redevelopment and the pressure of a growing city centre.

Why the others disappeared

The pattern is familiar from cities everywhere. Land in central Singapore grew valuable, families divided inheritances or fell on hard times, and large private compounds were sold for offices, shophouses and public buildings. The mansions also demanded constant care in a hot, wet climate, and traditional timber and plaster need skilled hands that grew scarce as the craft communities aged.

Tan Yeok Nee’s house survived partly through luck and partly because successive institutions found it useful. A railway official, a school, the Salvation Army and later educational tenants each needed space, and each kept the building standing.

What the survivor stands in for

Because the other three are gone, the House of Tan Yeok Nee has to carry the memory of all four. When you stand in its courtyards you are seeing the kind of space in which the Teochew elite of the period lived, did business and honoured their ancestors. The National Heritage Board describes it as a monument to the contributions of early Chinese immigrants, and to the later occupants who worked for the welfare of people in Singapore.

The Teochew presence also survives in religious and clan buildings. Yueh Hai Ching Temple on Phillip Street, one of the community’s oldest temples and itself a national monument, shows the same ornamented roofscape. The Roots.gov.sg page on the temple is worth reading alongside this chapter.